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2950-02-08 – Tales from the Service: The Ambush in the Tunnels

I never did get a chance to interview any of the prisoners on Hallman. I was recalled to Saint-Lô not long after last week’s entry hit the ingest network, and by the time you see this item, Fifth Fleet will be out of Berkant. With the speed we’re going, something has gone very wrong somewhere, and while there’s no official news as to what’s happening, the shipboard whisper network seems convinced we’re going to Håkøya.

Two days ago, I would have thought Håkøya the last place the fleet would need to go, but with the disruption of the hypercast relay network in the inner Nye Norge region now entering its third day (I am writing this on the sixth), it’s only reasonable to blame such an infrastructure collapse on enemy action.

As I have been aboard ship and far from the local hypercast relay, I haven’t been able to comb through the usual inbox backlog properly since we started out for Hallman. This week, we will conclude the underground encounter described to me by Corporal Rosenfeld. If we’re actually bound for Håkøya, it’s possible we’ll be far from any relays until after next week’s Tales from the Inbox is scheduled – if that’s the case, the system will use one of the backlog entries we’ve prepared for just that purpose.

Boz Rosenfeld stepped back from the threshold and crept back to his three compatriots. He dared not send them a radio message, lest even the encrypted signal be detected by their foes beyond. “Looks like about a dozen of them. The cavern is about ten meters across and maybe twenty-five deep.” He was almost whispering, even though the volume of his voice was wholly controlled by his light suit helmet, and that was operating at the lowest speaker setting. “Two crew-served weapons with interlocking fields of fire, but they’re focusing on a couple of passages off to the left.”

“Our friend Nate knows how to party.” Feng secured his carbine and began to unfold the precision rifle he usually kept slung behind his back. The large-bore, chemical-propellant weapon was far less than the ideal weapon for clearing Hallman’s winding caverns, but the Marine had insisted on bringing it along anyway.

Boz pointed to the weapon. "You’ll knock out the heavy guns. Forget the gunners." The heavy projectiles of the rifle should be able to wreck the fine inner workings of any Incarnation crew-served weapon beyond any hope of repair. “But MacGowan, you’re going to start this show. Make them keep their heads down as long as you can. While their heads are down, that’s when Feng takes out those guns.”

“Sure thing, Corporal.” MacGowan hefted his heavy automatic railgun, replete with cooling system and bulky hopper filled with ferroceramic slugs. He’d mostly recovered from his recent near-death experience, but even if his aim was shakier than an Annuska junkie, he’d be spewing enough ordinance to fill most of the cavern.

“What about me?” Moralez, facing away from his compatriots as he watched the tunnel along which they’d come, still managed to participate in the whispered conversation.

“You’re with me.” Boz unclipped a pair of thermobaric grenades from his webbing and handed them to MacGowan as he spoke. According to the techs topside, these weapons would have a decent kill radius and a minimal chance of collapsing the caverns. “They’re being led by an officer of some kind. We’re going to bag him, alive if possible. Could be it’s the ring-leader of this whole left-behind rabble.”

“Alive? What if it’s one of those Immortals?”

Boz chuckled. “Then we’re the damned unluckiest Marines on the Frontier, Moralez. But he’s probably just whoever Nate brass liked the least when they left.”

The other nodded uncertainly, his helmet hiding what Boz was almost certain was a worried frown. After a few seconds, Moralez similarly handed off his grenades, then secured his carbine to the back of his suit.

Boz pointed behind himself and waved MacGowan onward. “Give us about a minute to get into position, then start whenever you think it’ll cause the most confusion. Once we’re clear of the cavern, break off and home on the spike beacon. We’ll meet you there.”

While MacGownan and Feng crept forward, Boz drew his suit-linked sidearm, a hefty bolt thrower. The flashy, crackling ionized plasma thrown by this weapon would dazzle and confuse the Nate soldiers’ infrared optics, but the weapon could also do plenty of damage to the implants all Nate soldiers carried. Before the war, Marines had almost always carried cartridge-pistol sidearms, but after Margaux, the chemical-propellant weapons had been replaced in most units by the previously poorly-regarded “lightning bug.” Boz still wasn’t sure about the bolt thrower in general, but he doubted any other weapon would have the morale impact of a series of blue-white lightning bolts cracking through the damp cavern air.

Drawing his own bolt thrower, Moralez followed Boz back along the cavern to an intersection, then down a parallel passage to another opening into the large cavern. This one, which Boz had seen from his previous surveying, entered the larger space almost at floor level, with a pair of chunky stalagmites partially concealing its entrance. Nate had of course posted sentries to watch the many tunnel mouths along their flank, but three sentries had about a dozen openings to watch, and couldn’t possibly focus on all of them at once. They could rotate their heavy weapons and assorted troops to face a rearward threat in seconds, but to do so, they needed to know one was coming.

As Moralez crept forward to the stalagmites to see what was ahead, MacGowan’s heavy railgun tore the air with its rattling report, and a spray of sparks and dislodged rock splinters cut across the floor and far wall. Leaping forward and slapping Moralez on the shoulder, Boz braced his arm on the pillar of stone, lined up the reticle in his helmet on one of the sentries, and squeezed the trigger. His helmet dimmed to protect his eyes and infrared optics from the brief lightning-flash as the weapon traced an ionized path through the air and discharged an arc of high voltage into the man, and when the dimming subsided, the sentry was lying on the ground in a heap.

Another flash lit the scene as Moralez fired on another sentry at almost exactly the same time as the deeper crack of Feng’s precision rifle announced the demise of one of the crew-served weapons.

Watching men scatter for cover, Boz sighted in on a soldier peeking out from behind the cover of a fallen stalactite and fired again. Though the bolt didn’t connect to its target, the flash sent the man careening backwards, his electronics probably scrambled.

“There.” Moralez, no longer bothering with radio silence, bracketed a figure on Boz’s heads-up display. Though taking cover, the figure seemed to be shouting orders and waving at the crew of the remaining heavy weapon to spin it around to face the Marines. Like any good leader, the officer was as close to the front line as possible without actually getting in the way of his disorganized infantrymen, and he had found effective cover in an instant.

"Put a shot over his head.” Boz crouched down, preparing to sprint into the confusion. “That should scramble his radio for a few seconds. Then cover me.”

“Corporal, you’re a damned lunatic sometimes.” Moralez ducked to avoid hot rock splinters as a few of the enemy returned fire with their laser carbines, then popped up to fire a shot back. “At least wait for-”

The precision rifle thundered once more, and Boz watched sparks erupt into the face of the gunner on the second crew-served weapon. “That was my cue, Moralez.”

The Marine turned and fired a crackling bolt in the direction of the group’s leader, and Boz dove out of cover, following the brilliant energy blast’s path. As always with Nate laser weapons, he had no idea how many were firing at him – the weapons had no visible or audible indication of the passage of their microsecond-long coherent light beams, except when whatever they hit suddenly superheated and died.

Since Boz hadn’t died by the time he reached the opposite side of the officer’s chosen cover, he preferred, in order to spare his nerves, to think nobody had noticed him in time to take a shot. Before any of the enemy could correct that oversight, he hurdled over the outcropping and landed atop the dazed officer.

Though the Incarnation officer was fast enough to bat aside Boz’s armored fist with his laser carbine, the two went down in a heap. Kicking aside the laser rifle, Boz drove his suit-reinforced elbow into the figure’s midsection, then hefted him into an over-the-shoulder carry before leaping back over the outcrop. Even in Hallman’s zero-point-six gravities, a twinge in his back told him that he’d be feeling that maneuver later, but if it secured the officer alive for Naval Intelligence to interrogate, it would all be worth it.

Seeing Boz emerge with his prize in tow, MacGowan seemed to shift his fire, until everything to Boz’s right erupted in sparks and rock splinters. Sticking as close to this hailstorm of death as he dared, Boz hurried to rejoin Moralez.

Details: Written by Duncan L. Chaudhri

2950-02-15 – Tales from the Inbox: A Spacer’s Ruination

Looks like we didn’t get a story into the feed system before ingest time this week. That probably means our embed team aboard Saint- Lô has not been near a hypercast relay for at least eight days.

This is an expected consequence of wartime maneuvers and operations, and as such your Cosmic Background Embed Team has prepared a number of interesting accounts to publish in advance should the vagaries of war cause a lapse in communication with the greater interstellar datasphere.

Most likely, last week’s entry warned that this might be the case; if not, Duncan or Nojus will give an account of what’s been happening on the battle front in weeks to come.

The names used in this account are all pseudonymous (for reasons you will shortly discover), and the events described took place many months ago.

Ramiro W. slumped against the bulkhead near the airlock, letting the data slate in his hands fall to the pitted deck plating. He had been pacing the length of his tiny ship for hours, trying to come up with a way of escaping the fate he and his ship had fallen into. Even if he drained his savings, went as far into debt as his credit line would allow, and sold every unnecessary item aboard, he still couldn’t pay what it would cost to get Jen Daley spaceworthy again.

Selling off his poor vessel to the shipbreakers would earn Ramiro enough money to get home and get his feet under him, but he hated the idea of returning to Madurai in defeat. He’d left that world five years prior, hoping never to see the planet of his birth ever again. The Galactic West small-colony cargo circuit had for a time proved lucrative enough to keep his little ship running and even to turn a small profit, but as more and more independent outfits moved in from the war-torn Coreward Frontier, Ramiro had found himself struggling to stay competitive.

For a while, he’d simply reduced his profits, and then operated on a break-even basis in order to keep his routes. After all, he’d reasoned, the war couldn’t go on forever, and the ships and spacers displaced by the conflict would leave again when it was over. His profits from prior years had given him a comfortable buffer of savings in case something went catastrophically wrong.

Something had indeed gone wrong. Jen Daley’s ancient, reliable fusion reactor had begun to fail on the return trip from remote Holst’s Run, finally scramming for the last time just after the final jump into the outer Philadelphia system. Limping into port on only the power provided by the auxiliary solar panel arrays, he’d been forced to pay out to replace the old, destroyed machinery after four different starship mechanics had failed to wake the fusion plant. His savings had covered the new reactor core, but only barely.

Three runs later, Jen Daley’s heat sequestration systems had gone out, threatening alternately to boil and then freeze Ramio as the ship approached and then withdrew from the stars which gave life to Galactic West’s many habitable planets.

He’d put up with the discomfort without repairing the system for nearly a month before finally giving in and having it worked on. For one glorious week everything aboard Jen Daley had seemed to be in perfect working order, and then everything had gone to Hell.

Most likely, the heat sequestration had been broken by an electrical fault in the main power system routing power from the ship’s brand-new, high-performance core transformers through critical sensor components. Ramiro only knew this now, since the same fault had eventually recurred, this time subjecting the star drive to the electrical might of a miniature artificial sun. The folder nodes along the sides of the bow had melted, and droplets of molten metal had flowed down inside their housings, connecting things in unholy and unplanned ways until the whole hull was part of one gigantic high-voltage circuit, ruining every sensor, thruster, gyro, antenna, and other small outward-facing apparatus aboard.

Fortunately for Ramiro, this time the fault happened when he was only a few hundred kilometers out the grand Amadei Philadelphia transfer station. Unfortunately for him, repairing his ship this time would cost nearly double what he could manage to pay, and no repair team on the station would allow an independent spacer to pay in installments.

Sighing, Ramiro stooped to pick up the data slate, undamaged by its collision with the deck. He had been offered one alternative to consigning his ship to the breakers, but it was an alternative he couldn’t possibly accept. Better to return to Madurai for another decade of credit-pinching than to sell his soul and future to her.

Ramiro he keyed open the airlock and headed into the station to find a shipbreaker’s representative. A moment later his comm pinged. Scowling, he shoved the earpiece into his ear. “Answer.”

“Ramie, don’t do it. You know I can help you.”

“No, Liv, you can’t.” He didn’t bother wondering how she knew what he’d decided – perhaps it was as simple as having a camera watching his ship’s airlock. “I’d rather go back to the dirt than fly on your terms.”

“I find that hard to believe.” Livia Farran’s silky voice carried a note of mock concern. Ramiro and Galactic West’s most innovative con artist had plenty of run-ins over the years, most of them unfriendly. “You’d rather keep flying, even if it means compromising a little bit.”

“A little bit?” Ramiro’s hands balled into fists. “I won’t help you swindle colonists.”

“Any more colonists, you mean. You’ve already done it once.”

Ramiro winced. He’d taken on Livia Farran as a passenger early on in his career as an independent spacer thinking her a mining expert and only learned her credentials and results were a total sham after she’d been paid nearly a million credits by three hardscrabble colonies to give them the locations of nonexistent formations of rare minerals.

“Anyway, Ramie, I’m on to something new. Something I think won't bruise your precious scruples very much at all. No more stealing sweets from the babies.”

Ramiro sighed. Could it hurt to listen? “You have sixty seconds, then you’re blocked again.” He’d comms-blocked Liv more times than he could count, but she had more official identities and datasphere footprints than he could easily find. Even if he did it again, all she’d need to do was use one he hadn’t seen before.

“Well, I was thinking. You know who’s got a lot of money these days and who won’t go crying to the authorities if they’re idiots who get that money stolen? The Ladeonists.”

Ramiro stopped in the middle of the corridor, traffic pushing past him on both sides. “You’re insane. Authorities? They’d send a kill team.”

“Probably not, especially if we did it in a way that would make them look too much like idiots. Hey, look at it this way, you’d be doing your part in the war effort. You know those guys are getting money from the other side.”

Ramiro’s shoulders slumped. He wanted very much to tell Liv off, to continue on his way to the shipbreakers’ office, but he couldn’t do it. Swindling Ladeonists was bad news, but he had very little issue with the idea morally. “Anyone going along with you has got to have a death wish.”

“So you’re in, then.” Liv’s smile was audible through the comms circuit. “I’ll wire you just enough to get that rusty tub fixed up. I’ll be along in a few days, then we can talk details.”

Ramiro sighed. “I’m going to regret this, aren’t I?”

“Oh, certainly. But I promise we’re only going to steal from people who totally have it coming.”

Ramiro cut the channel. He knew just how little to trust Livia Farran’s promises, but he knew he had to take that chance.

Details: Written by Cosmic Background Team

2950-02-22 – Tales from the Inbox: A Mercenary’s Charity

[Note from the C.B. main office on Planet at Centauri: We have reached out to the Fifth Fleet press office to ask about restoration of contact with embed teams with the fleet, which is rumored to be engaged with the enemy at Håkøya. Fifth Fleet’s representatives at Maribel say they’re working on it, and not to worry in the meantime, but they would not confirm a]ny communication with Admiral Zahariev or the fleet in the past seventeen days since we lost contact with our embed team on their departure from the Berkant system.]

This is an expected consequence of wartime maneuvers and operations, and as such your Cosmic Background Embed Team has prepared a number of interesting accounts to publish in advance should the vagaries of war cause a lapse in communication with the greater interstellar datasphere.

Most likely, last week’s entry warned that this might be the case; if not, Duncan or Nojus will give an account of what’s been happening on the battle front in weeks to come.

The names used in this account are all pseudonymous.

“Come on, Neza.” On the screen, Anders Gioconda’s wide, humorless grin revealed several gaps in his dentistry. “You really going to do this? You know there’ll be trouble.”

Sabine Neza gritted her teeth. “Might have kept paying if you hadn’t raised your take.” Her voice faltered as she switched on a parallel comms channel, making sure to leave the link to Gioconda open. “Commander Evans, consider any approach within fifteen thousand klicks as a hostile act.”

“Understood, Boss.” Milo Evans, the leader of the mercenary squadron Sabine had hired, didn’t sound scared. Though technically Gioconda’s band of brigands had just as many strike rigs as answered Evans’s command, most likely the pirates’ ships were in poorer repair, and Evans probably thought his pilots better flyers in any case.

“Move on, Gioconda. Find another route to squeeze.” Sabine shrugged. “This one’s getting too hot.”

“This isn’t over, Neza.” Gioconda’s grin vanished. “A small-time outfit like yours can’t afford to keep hiring muscle forever. We’ll be back.”

Sabine shrugged. “We’ll be waiting.” With a wave, she cut the comms channel, and Gioconda vanished.

“The pirates are breaking off, Skipper.” Sid Borivoi, Sabine’s second in command, breathed a sigh of relief.

“I believe him about coming back, though.” Sabine stood from her command chair. “Thank you for your assistance, Commander. Once we’re past them, you can bring your flyers back aboard. Helm, resume previous course.”

With the eyes of her compatriots on her the whole way, Sabine left the freighter’s command deck and headed down toward her cabin on deck five. She managed to keep the trembling at bay until the door was shut and privacy-locked behind her. Collapsing onto her bunk, she let the shaking overcome her. Scaring off Gioconda was the right thing to do, but she knew the pirate would leave no good deed unpunished. She’d acquiesced to the brigand’s pillaging and extortion for years. Sure, it’d hurt her profit margins, but the man and his goons had never hurt anyone. When he came back, she knew he would not be so easy to deal with.

Sabine’s door chimed. She ignored it, but after ten seconds, it chimed again.

“What is it?” Sabine tried to project a weary, disgruntled voice to hide her condition.

“Can I come in, Boss? Got some figures to run past you.”

Sabine recognized the clipped accent of the leader of the mercenaries she’d hired. hurriedly standing, she took a few breaths to try to calm herself and smoothed her uniform. She hadn’t expected them back aboard for at least an hour, so either she’d lost track of time, or the pirates had cleared out faster than expected. "Come in.”

Evidently her attempts to conceal her distress hadn’t worked. Milo Evans looked her up and down and a worried frown briefly escaped his usual professionally neutral expression. “I can come back later if it’s a bad time.”

“No, it’s all right.” Sabine shrugged. “You had something for me, Mr. Evans?”

“I ran the rates for an extended contract.” The mercenary unfolded a small tablet display.

“Thank you, but Gioconda was right. I can’t afford to renew your contract past the terms we’ve already agreed.” Sabine shook her head. “Hopefully by the time he realizes you’re gone, he’ll have found a better take than he had here.”

Evans offered the tablet again. “I think you can afford us, Captain Neza.” He smiled in an odd way that suggested he knew something Sabine didn’t.

Frowning, Sabine took the tablet. Her eyes widened as she read the figure at the bottom of the screen. “There’s got to be an error. Your company can’t possibly stay flying if we only pay this.”

“There is no error. Your pirate sounded familiar, so I ran a voiceprint and ran it past our records. Turns out Anders Gioconda’s real name is Anders Thu, and there’s a price on his head in Farthing’s Chain to the tune of thirty thousand credits. I doubt it’ll take more than a month to find him and put him out of business for good.”

Sabine looked at the various line items listed on the tablet. “Put him out of business? How- Oh, this isn’t a close escort contract.”

Evans nodded. “The way we see it, the cheapest way to guard against pirates is to go out and kill the bastards where they live. Since there’s a bounty involved...”

“You’re cutting me a discount.” Sabine closed the folding display and looked up to the mercenary. “Thank you, Commander. I know you didn’t have to do this.”

Evans shrugged. “Way I see it, Boss, I did.” He turned and left Sabine’s cabin without another word.

Details: Written by Cosmic Background Team

2949-03-01 – Tales from the Inbox: A Spacer’s Tempest

[Note from the C.B. main office on Planet at Centauri: Fifth Fleet’s representatives at Maribel say they’re able to confirm that a major fleet action has taken place in the Håkøya system. Saint-Lô was involved but is not destroyed, and they assured us that all of our personnel survived the battle. How they know this for certain was not explained. According to analysis by experts here on Centauri, the most likely explanation is that a long-range, low-bandwidth hypercast relay was set up at the outskirts of the system for limited communication on military channels.]

Most likely, last week’s entry warned that this might be the case; if not, Duncan or Nojus will give an account of what’s been happening on the battle front in weeks to come.

The names used in this account are all pseudonymous, and it is a continuation of another item we set aside for this eventuality which you should have already seen (Tales from the Inbox: A Spacer’s Ruination).

“This is not going to work, Liv.”

“Come on, Ramie, you’re going to let a little w- Augh!”

Ramiro wrestled with the controls as Jen Daley bucked in the eddying wind and the flat ground approaching dead ahead suddenly lurched into a vertical cliff. He’d landed his ship on open ground without the benefit of a spaceport’s guidance systems and sensors before, but Bettendorf’s notoriously unpredictable weather was far beyond his comfort zone. Punching up maximum thrust, he hauled the nose up and held it there until blue-white light from the planet’s primary broke through the clouds.

Livia Farran, strapped into one of the secondary consoles, pushed her loose, straight black hair out of her face. “Well, that was interesting.”

Ramiro scowled. He hated interesting, and his life since he’d let Livia fund the repairs to his ship had been all kinds of interesting. “We’re going back up to orbit until this storm clears. Call your contact and tell him we’ll be late.”

“I’ll try, but you know how these guys are.”

“Let me guess.” Ramiro set the ship’s autopilot to an orbital trajectory. “Twitchy?”

“A little.” Livia giggled in that way she probably hoped was disarming. Ramiro had long ago learned to ignore the con-artist's affectations, knowing that her mannerisms were as carefully selected as her wardrobe. “They tend to treat everything like a test of loyalty.”

“So they’ll think, if we don’t risk our lives flying into those thunderheads to land, we aren’t loyal enough to do business with?”

“You know, you catch onto all this stuff way too fast to be an honest spacer. Honestly I think they still suspect we might be with BCI or something."

Ramiro massaged his forehead with one palm for a moment before cancelling the autopilot and returning the ship to manual control. “Looks like I’m going to try that approach again.” While he and his erstwhile partner were hardly working for the Confederated government’s Bureau of Counter-Intelligence, the fact that they were planning to steal from Livia’s contacts made reinforcing such suspicions incredibly unhealthy.

“Probably a good idea.” Livia tapped away at her console for a moment. “No beacons to fix a comms beam on anyway, and they’ll probably shoot us if we start broadcasting.”

Ramiro pointed Jen Daley’s nose back at the boiling cloud-tops, and the cheery daylight soon vanished behind swirling gray fog which quickly faded almost to black. Though no motion could be felt from inside the ship’s inertial isolation, Ramiro could tell from his instruments that his trusty ship was being pushed almost onto its side by the wind, and he made a few corrections. If Daley came down on any part of herself besides the landing skids, it would never leave Bettendorf again, and the best case scenario would see the pair of them stranded.

Fighting wind shears that seemed to change to a new direction for every thousand meters of altitude, Ramiro pointed the ship down at the location where his instruments told him there was a clear field to land on. In such poor weather, the autopilot’s self-landing system probably wouldn’t work, so he prepared to take the ship all the way in by hand.

Since the only thing visible outside the cockpit was clouds and rain until the last few hundred meters, Livia probably had no idea how dangerous what they were doing was until they broke through the cloud ceiling and once again laid eyes on the landing site. Almost immediately, an updraft nearly flipped Daley over on her back, and Ramiro hauled on the controls to right it.

"So, uh.” Livia’s tone remained overly conversational, as it always did when she was concealing extreme worry or stress. “How likely is this to kill us, Ramie?”

“Going to have to land on manual. Say, fifteen or twenty percent.”

“Ah.” The woman watched the ground, occasionally rolling or pitching out of view, grew steadily closer. “Next time, maybe you should, ah... pick the place.”

“Liv, I don’t care what you offer me. One way or another...” Ramiro’s fingers ached from how tightly he was squeezing the controls, but he dared not relax. Passing a hundred meters of altitude, he deployed the landing skids, and prayed they’d be on the side of the ship that came down first. “There’s not going to be a next time.”

One last eddy of wind threatened to push Jen Daley back into the sky, and then, with a heavy thump that reverberated through the ship despite the best efforts of the inertial isolation system, the skids sank into the wet Bettendorf soil. As the ship settled into place, Ramiro slowly took his hands off the controls and took a few long, slow breaths, watching rain streak across the forward viewpanel.

“You keep saying that, and I still don’t believe you.” Livia, near-death experience apparently already forgotten, unbuckled her restraints and stood from her station. “I’ll go check the cargo. Our friends should be here soon.”

Details: Written by Cosmic Background Team

Page 59 of 94

Tales from the Service: The Ambush in the Tunnels

Tales from the Inbox: A Spacer’s Ruination

Tales from the Inbox: A Mercenary’s Charity

Tales from the Inbox: A Spacer’s Tempest

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